Sue Brown

Starbucks Cafe, Cambridge, Massachusetts (February 2003)

Sue Brown was born and raised in Roanoke, Virginia. She was the first person in her family to go to college and has spent most of her adult life in academia. She currently lives near Boston and teaches linguistics. While still professionally involved in higher education, she spends as much time as she can spare in her studio. Sue's adventure in painting was inspired by her discovery of independent artists on eBay. It all began with collecting. After building up an impressive collection, Sue decided to buy some paints and give it a try herself. What happened after that was beyond her wildest imagination. She loved it! And she started getting lots of positive feedback from other artists who encouraged her to paint more and even to try and sell some of her work. She had her first solo exhibit in February at a cafe in Harvard Square and has sold her first paintings.

Sue is truly a "self-taught" artist. She has learned all she knows from trial and error, and from reading a wide variety of books on painting. Sue's approach to painting is quite varied. Sometimes she chooses a nice photograph of something familiar or moving and attempts to reproduce her view of its subject on canvas. More often, however, she just picks a palette and lets the paint fall where it may. Eventually the painting reveals itself to her, as if by magic, and she just goes where it takes her. Often she will apply gel and pumice stone or sand to the canvas before painting to give the surface texture. She then lets the shapes that emerge give her hints as to what to do next. She has no strong preference for subject matter just yet, but her paintings so far have revealed a tendency towards a mix of real and unreal, especially in her abstract figures. Her young style ranges from impressionist to expressionist to pseudo-realist. She believes that she will eventually find the strongest of her voices, but for now she's quite happy to be a creative "polyglot".

Artjmajeur Silver Award